


Only So Many Sunrises

by Fuzziestpuppy



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, One Shot, Partner Betrayal, Spies & Secret Agents, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 03:14:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18730585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy
Summary: Ishwari needed that brief moment to hone the blade as sharp as she possibly could, so he wouldn’t feel it when she sank it into his bared and trusting throat.Let me not cause him pain, Kyra,she whispered under her breath.Let it be quick and clean.  Let him never wake, lost in good dreams.





	Only So Many Sunrises

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, [brokibrodinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokibrodinson/pseuds/brokibrodinson), [BunnyMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/pseuds/BunnyMoss), for being such wonderful beta readers. You guys really are the best.

***

 

While the big bath filled with water, Ishwari sat on the edge of it with the whetstone and the knife and honed it carefully, methodically. The sound of the water would cover the scrape of stone on steel, should he happen to wake. He’d think that she merely wished to bathe and in truth she needed to, after what they had done. But she had a feeling that he would stay asleep for a long while yet; Mohan always did. She prayed he would. Literally, with a whispered plea to Kyra: _Help me do this. Steady my hand, firm my heart, for I am lost as a spy, as a wife. Everything is burning around me. Please, let him stay asleep, let him never wake and look into my eyes, let me never have to look into his._ She shut her own for a brief moment, her hands stilling when she unwillingly pictured what she often sees in Pagan’s eyes.

Warmth, and that dark spark that might be some species of joy.

Ishwari needed that brief moment to hone the blade as sharp as she possibly could, so he wouldn’t feel it when she sank it into his bared and trusting throat. _Let me not cause him pain, Kyra,_ she whispered under her breath. _Let it be quick and clean. Let him never wake, lost in good dreams._

When it was sharp enough to shave a bit of hair off her forearm, she turned the water off, set the whetstone on the sink. She pushed herself to her feet and stood trembling, naked as the day she was born, and forced her hand to stop its shaking. She had learned to do this, to stare steadily at her own hand and _will_ it to be so, and in time it did.

Her legs carried her without much conscious input across the cool tile, across the carpet, soft and springy under her bare feet. To the bedside, as she stared down into his open face. Asleep, he looked even younger than twenty-one, more boy than man. The dark shock of his hair had fallen into his eye, and she clamped down on the urge to reach and _smooth it back._ Something about that impulse had her hand tightening on the knife, the other curling into a hard fist, her short nails pricking into her skin. Sudden rage in her belly, hot and sharp and _cruel,_ that she had been so very weak, that her husband had asked this of her, that her people _expected_ it of her. How she no longer knew right from wrong, up from down, in a life where she had always known where truth was and the gods were as close as a breath to offer guidance, offer peace. Pagan himself believed in no gods at all.

And yet here she was, the one about to murder a man in cold, betrayed blood. Here, in the bed that they’d been together in, the King’s big bed.

Their fates were not entwined; not when he was doomed to die, not when she would walk out of this place with her baby on her hip, Mohan’s son, who would be the next King of Kyrat. But she was so weak. It was that look in his eye, that spark of _happiness_ in his eyes that had done it, every time he set them on her.

 

They had clutched at each other last night, her hands in his hair and his on her hips and he had leaned in and kissed her, soft and sweet and that had sparked heat deep, deep in her belly. She couldn’t remember the last time Mohan had kissed her with that kind of tenderness, really couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it at all. More than that, she didn’t even know who had begun this, who had broken first after weeks of that sweet tension between them. His hands on her, hers on him…did it matter, when they were both damned?

Pagan had grabbed her hand with his eyes crinkling in mirth and pulled her in here, and she had expected him to just push her against the nearest solid object and have his way with her. But he had put his own back to the door, had pulled her flush against his solid heat like he couldn’t stand for her to be anywhere else, and had bent and _kissed_ her. She had gasped at the feel of his tongue teasing at her lip, and as soon as she did he was _inside,_ sliding his tongue alongside hers and she had never felt such a thing in her entire life, this kissing with _tongues._ She had been convinced that was something that only happened in Western movies.

The way she could smell him, _taste_ him overwhelmed her senses like some kind of drug, had made everything seem unreal and had her grabbing at his face and he pulled back enough to laugh at her innocence. But even that was sweet, the vibration of it against her lips. It was a sweet boyish laugh, as he pulled her to the bed and they tumbled onto it and kissed that way until she could feel how slick she had become when she shifted, hot and slippery and aching just a little between her legs.

In that moment nothing else mattered, not her marriage vows, not her mission, nothing.

His hands were so large and warm as they cradled her face, and she could feel him hot and heavy against her hip even through their clothes, and she had thought, _this is where he pushes me down and takes me._ She nearly welcomed the thought. But instead he’d pulled her on top of him and guided her hands to his shirt, and her fingers had automatically undone the first button they came to.

“It’s all right, you can touch me too. I want you to,” he had whispered, and she realized that it had never actually occurred to her to do so. She slipped them through their buttonholes with shaking fingers as he brushed his thumb over her ear, as he let her long braid slide loosely through his fist. Emboldened, she ran her hands down his chest, solid muscle under invitingly plush skin, and as she brushed a thumb over his nipple he hissed almost like it had hurt and arched up under her hands like a woman would.

He continually shocked her outside of this room, with his disregard of propriety and sharp, laughing wit and so she shouldn’t have been surprised, but even so it had shocked her a great deal when he had swirled that sharp tongue into her _ear_ and urged her to pinch a little. That had her tugging at her own sari to get the confining cloth out of the way, wanting his hands on her too. He had laughed again, rich and full as he assisted her, and when her breasts were finally bared to him he had wriggled lower and took one of her nipples in his hot mouth, shocking her all over again.

She lost track of where the rest of their clothes went after that, lost in a hot haze. In her experience, the good parts of sex, the kissing and touching ended quickly. Right about when a man mounted the woman, moved in her for a minute or two, came with a grunt, and rolled off and went to sleep. Anything else was a fairytale, not _real;_ merest fantasy. She believed that…until Pagan had held her and asked her what she liked and she had no real idea of what he had meant. Until he reached between her legs, had trailed his long fingers over her lower lips and then delved _in_ just a little.

“Is that good?” he’d asked, cradling her against his chest with the other arm. “Do you like that? Oh, you _do,_ don’t you,” he’d said in delight, as he’d gathered that slick moisture on his fingers and swept it up to slide teasingly against that hot, tight knot that only she had ever secretly and guiltily touched.

Pagan’s fingers on it instead had been so much better than her own had been, had her gasping and rocking her hips into his hand. It didn’t take long at all for that heat to build into something like a conflagration as he held her close and kissed her, and as he slid his tongue into her mouth he slid those long fingers up inside her the same way, slickly filling and moving inside as his thumb worked at that little nub, as she shamelessly pushed herself into his hand.

“That’s right,” he murmured, as he had urged her to take her pleasure, encouraging her rocking hips with his other hand at the small of her back. “Come for me. I want to feel it…I can’t wait to feel you quiver against my fingers,” and she had seized his hand in both of hers and pushed it more tightly against her, held it _just so,_ legs shaking, shaking hard all over as that tension blew apart all at once. She groaned between her clenched teeth as he drew it out, working her through the pleasure of it, and she could indeed feel her inner walls pulse and quiver around his fingers. She rode his hand through it until she slumped bonelessly and he eased her down onto the mattress.

Part of her was absolutely appalled, that she was capable of moaning and _writhing_ for him, like a prostitute. Another part of her felt as if it were roaring to life under his hands, under her skin.

She had only enough energy to roll over and open her arms for him, and when he entered her there was no pain, no resistance, just the pleasure of him slowly sinking into her, filling her. Hot and heavy and even better than his fingers had been. He was bigger than Mohan; taller and heavier too but she had been so ready for him that they had melted together, him fitting seamlessly into her, perfectly rubbing that ache away.

She had wrapped her arms around his shoulders and just held on as he finally took his own gasping, rutting pleasure from her…but even then he was gentle, had kissed her warmly, had held her close and intimate, skin pressed against skin, sweaty but good. Her nose filled with his good smell, and that tension began building in her again as she moved with him. Not surprisingly he didn’t last long, as he shook in her arms and pressed himself as deeply into her as he could and came with a cry he mostly muffled against her throat. She reveled at the feel of him throbbing deeply, hotly inside of her, greedily taking his essence into herself, in shuddering waves, and wondered how it was that things had gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

After awhile of him trying not to lie on her too heavily, he raised his flushed face and focused his bleary eyes on her. “You’ve worn me out, my dear,” he said with a chuckle, “But I have perhaps one more in me before I pass out. Are you ready for another? I thought you might be by now,” and she really hadn’t any idea of what he was talking about, not that that was unusual. “I can go down on you,” he had said, rolling over a little and stretching with a jaw-cracking yawn. “I’d like to. I bet you taste amazing.”

She had stared. “What are you...”

Pagan sat up a little. “Do you mean to tell me that Mohan has never…” he trailed off, incredulous. “Oh, oh my poor dear,” as she had bristled a little. She loathed feeling ignorant around his worldly ways. “He is an utter, backwards fool. Come here, sweet Ishwari. Let me show you something.”

The heat of his breath ghosting across her _down there_ had been shocking too, but all of his surprises so far had turned out to be delightful ones and so she’d let him part her thighs gently with his hands as he’d settled his big shoulders in the space between them. ‘Going down’ had meant parting her lips with his thumbs and running a line of wet heat up the center of her with his tongue. She nearly writhed away from him; it had felt so strange and _vulnerable_ and she didn’t know how he stood to do it, but then that vulnerability had warred with purest melting pleasure as he’d sealed his lips around that little bud and sucked it into his mouth, flicked his tongue against it and she was lost again, made of nothing but nerve endings and sensation.

She _hated_ how he could steal her self-control so easily even as she bucked up into his mouth. He had ridden out her arching thrusts with a groan like there was nowhere else he’d rather be than between her legs, exquisite vibration against that spot as her fingers scrabbled at the back of his head. It was like she was a pump that was always primed now, the hot tide of her orgasm welling up so quickly deep within her.

“Please,” she had sobbed out. “Please, inside…” And he heard, and slid two of those exquisite fingers into her, into her slick heat and his own seed and stroked her hotly from within and she came seeing starbursts, even harder than that first time. As she had laid there dazed, Pagan had eased his fingers out with another panting groan and pushed himself into his own fist made slick by their combined essences before she’d even gotten her breath back.

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” he rumbled, panting and flushed and beautiful, and that was power, that he’d gotten that way solely from pleasuring _her._ She shifted her leg so she could watch him, fascinated as he touched himself. She could have watched him for ages, entranced by the pleasured strain in his face, listened to the wet sounds his hand made as he pushed into it, the way he made a little twist near the end of each one. Unfortunately, he only lasted maybe ten strokes before he curled around himself and shuddered and came hot and creamy over his own fingers, his head still resting against her thigh.

Neither of them moved for a long time.

Finally, Pagan lifted his head from her leg and smiled at her vaguely as he wiped his hand and his chin on the bottom of the sheet. He had crawled up to take her in his arms, dragged a blanket over them from somewhere and snuggled up against her, also something she wasn’t used to. “Just as I suspected, that was delightful,” he mumbled drowsily. “I could _taste_ it the moment you came.”

Curious despite herself, she had asked, “What…what do I taste like?”

He’d smiled with his eyes closed. “Mmm, a bit like apple peel.”

She had blinked at that, not really believing him. “Really.”

“Mmm hmm.” He opened his eyes. “Here,” he said brightly, and shifted to kiss her, nearly lapping at her tongue with his. And as strange as it was, she could taste what he meant; a little tangy, a little sweet, with an undertone of what she thought might be him, the two of them together.

Pagan nearly fell asleep kissing her, his face pressed to hers and his arm draped heavily over her. She had lain there for a while and listened to his steady, soft breaths, surrounded by the good warm smells of sex and his skin. Exhausted and limp and sated, even as her mind raced and raced in little terrified circles, her eyes wide in the soft light of the oil lamp.

In way too deep. Compromised. There was no way she could do this anymore, the betrayal a twisting tension under her skin. Months ago, he had accepted her cover story readily enough; they had been friends of a sort from the Royalist days, and she had capitalized on it. _Mohan is...he is so hard and angry all the time that I am afraid he will hurt me, hurt Ajay. I am sorry, I had nowhere else to go,_ she had told him, and he had welcomed her in.

It wasn’t even entirely a lie.

A loose rock in the low stone wall outside the backdoor was their message drop point, Pagan’s head gardener being one of theirs. Even if this had never happened, he had perhaps only six months, a year at the outside to go on living. Before they moved against him. Time had always been against them, and he couldn’t walk the golden path of her dreams with her. She needed to end this now, and quickly. For him. For the both of them.

Once she made her strike, what was in her heart would die with him. It had to. There was no choice.

Finally, she had eased out from under his arm to creep across the hall to her own suite and pull up the false bottom of one of her drawers to get the knife. She had checked on Ajay, stroked his little back for a moment as he slept peacefully on. He was always a good sleeper, her good little man.

Ishwari had slipped back across the hall, into the royal suite and gazed at Pagan’s bare back in the warm light, the freckles across his shoulders. He too slept peacefully on. She went on watching the rise and fall of his breathing for a long time before she walked into the bathroom and slowly, mechanically turned on the water.

 

And now here she stood, that knife in her hand as she quivered in her rage and her grief. What Mohan would never understand was that he was every bit as hard and cruel as this man, but without his sweetness, without that light in his eyes.

Ishwari tried to make her mind drift far away to somewhere, anywhere else. Somewhere gray and cold that would let her do this, as she positioned the knife right at Pagan’s carotid like she’d been taught. She needed to drive it in good and hard, with no hesitation. If she flinched, he’d writhe in pain and she…she couldn’t think about that. No room for fear or doubt, only the blade, aimed down and back. Only the thought of driving it into him with all of her weight behind it. Bunching her muscles for the blow, she let the tip of the knife hover just above his skin.

Pagan’s eyes opened.

She should have struck then, before awareness returned to his dark eyes, before they could meet hers. His widened, but only for a moment. The look in them, as she stared helplessly back, turned resigned.

He knew. _He knew._

In a flash, she saw it all. He had known why she was here, _what_ she was…and had treated her as an honored guest. Had fallen, if not in love, at least into lust with her…and taken her tenderly, eagerly to bed with him anyway.

He _knew,_ and the sorrow in his face was profound.

When she didn’t drive the knife in, he reached for her hands…and carefully repositioned them to a better grip on the handle. He pulled the knife against his throat himself, a tiny rivulet of blood running down from where the razor-sharp tip of the blade had sunk in just a little.

“Do it,” he murmured to her. “If it must be done, I would rather it be you than anyone else.” He swallowed against the blade’s pressure, and she could feel it through her clenched hands. “I know that I can’t stay on top forever…I know that,” and he smiled, actually _smiled_ for her, though it was small and sad. “One night. One good, sweet night with you, my dear. That was all I wanted, and you made it good for me. So do what you must, only…make it fast, if you care for me at all,” low and rough and strained, his eyes locked on hers. His hands squeezed hers for a brief moment, a small caress…and fell away.

He closed his eyes.

Hands clenched, she leaned over him still naked, just as he was, in some dark parody of intimacy. She took him in; the sheet thrown carelessly over his hips, his broad chest rising and falling more quickly than normal, fine muscle shifting over bone. She could destroy it all, topple yet another king, still the breath in his lungs and be a hero to her people. Transform him into so much cooling meat…and did he not deserve it, with his bloodstained hands? All she had to do was lean down, let her weight do the work.

And then it would be her with the bloody hands, the blood of her one-time lover coating them. A better man than her own husband. Unbidden, that feeling of his fingers sliding gently into her came to her mind, his delight at making her _feel,_ stroking pleasure into her.

The longer she stretched it out, the harder he trembled, his big hands wadded into the bedclothes.

Both of them damned. There was no going back to how things were, to the good little Kyrati wife that she hadn’t been able to be since Ajay was born. She couldn’t be what Mohan wanted, never could. Maybe she couldn’t walk that golden path of her dreams anymore either. Not with Mohan. Maybe it had always been barred to her, even though it had been her dream. Too much blood, too much anger.

No going back to what was, no coming back from this act.

Ishwari chose a third way and jerked her hands away from him. She spun off the bed and flung the knife as hard as she could at the opposite wall, where it sank into the plaster nearly to the hilt and vibrated with the force of the blow.

Pagan’s eyes shot open, a tear running from the corner of one.

She reached for him and wiped that tear roughly, clumsily away with the side of her hand, even as her own ran and dripped off her chin. She bent over and put her lips against that tiny cut in his skin and sobbed like the world was ending.

He had no reason to, but Pagan gathered her up and held her anyway. “It’ll be all right somehow, darling. We’ll make it all right somehow, you and I. Shhhh, we’ll stay up here and make it right, you and me and little Ajay,” he mumbled into her hair, like someone who didn’t quite know what they were saying anymore. She didn’t believe him in the slightest but let herself be comforted by the rough silk of his voice, as her mind contemplated and then shied away from what she’d nearly done. Undeserved comfort. She ran her chilled hands over his warm skin again and again, placed her head on her chest to listen as his too-fast, frightened heartbeat slowed and steadied.

They were both going to die for this, but she found herself not particularly caring at the moment.

There was a very small possibility that she already had his child in her belly. She was at the right part of her cycle for it to happen, but she found she didn’t care about that either. Too far in the future. Too many what-ifs. She climbed back into the bed with him and held to him and he held to her as she shook with cold and reaction. He snagged the blanket with his outstretched toes and got it wrapped around the both of them and eventually she was able to relax some of her clenched muscles, lulled by the heat of his body.

“How long,” she whispered against his skin.

He drew a deep breath, let it out. “A month. At least that long. Kamran’s been intercepting your messages and replacing them with falsified ones.” Even that was hard for her to care about. “This war…Ishwari, you know I don’t want this war. I never did.” But she wondered for a moment what he thought would happen when he took the throne in such a way, with betrayal and murder.

“Did you really think I would kill you,” she said instead, and his heart immediately began to beat hard. Not fast, but with a deep thudding under her cheek. He was quiet for a while.

“…yes, for a moment.” His hand rested warmly on her back. “There for a moment, I thought perhaps you should.”

When he lied, he did so with a glib and silvered tongue, boldly flippant. But when he told the truth, whatever he said came out so candid and heartbreakingly honest that she didn’t know how he stood to say those things, to be so vulnerable. Nothing in between. His lies were always like armor between himself and the world.

“Can you ever trust me again,” she whispered.

He looked down, trying to catch her eye. “Would you cry for me and touch me like this and have it in your heart to try again?” He pulled her even closer, arms warm around her under the blanket. “I don’t think so. But you can’t go back,” he said tightly. “I think he’ll try to fucking kill you, if you go back to him. If I know Mohan at all.”

She thought on that. On how she made that choice, the instant she pulled her hands away.

“You are right. I cannot go back, and yet I cannot go forward either. All I know is that I could not…could not have your blood on my hands.  Not you.  Not now...” She ran one of those hands down his side, just to feel the air moving in and out of him, the subtle and beautiful machinery of his body, of his continued existence.

“Stay here with me, Ishwari,” he said, and this time his voice was soft and warm. “Keep feeding them information as if all’s well, and we’ll think of something.”

Beyond the light of the lamp, the dark square beyond the curtains had brightened to pale gray. Pressed skin-to-skin and full-length against him, she actually felt as if she might be able to be warm again. Her eyes kept wanting to close of their own volition after so much, the calm quiet after a storm, but there was more she needed to tell him.

“We cannot know what is going to happen, but I have already made my choice, do you understand? To…to be here with you. I made it when I flung the knife away. It is all too precious. _Life._ ” She touched all of him she could reach, stroked his hair, the tender skin behind his ear. “All of us, we only have so many days. Only so many times to watch the sun rise, and no one can know how many they will have. Only so much time, and no more. And I have this knot in me, this feeling that says, we will not have much. But it does not matter. I want to stay here with you, and we can make each of those days count.” She was so exhausted, and he was too…but she couldn’t bear to waste even a moment with him. Not this day. Eventually, they would sleep curled around each other, fitted together like puzzle pieces, but right now…

She found it in her to smile a little. “What do you say?"  She glanced out the window again, at the light beginning to go gold and rose with morning.  "Do you want to go out onto the balcony and watch this one with me?”

Pagan’s big hands came up and cradled her face and he kissed her with that dark spark of joy in his eyes, and that was all the answer she needed.

 

 

End

***

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments/ideas/suggestions welcome!


End file.
